Now, Drown
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: When Sly begins having nightmares about his parent's death, it somehow brings him together with the last person he ever expected. Now together they're going to deal with his inner demons and long kept secrets. SlyBentley, slash, angst. Ch 2 fixed!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Blame Lombnut! This is his fault for encouraging me to write like this, and currently I'm so sleep deprived I can't even type straight, so this will be far, far from up to par. But for lack of other ideas our plot can just be 'love and angst and comfort and stealing things' at the moment. Timeline wise this is sometime after Bentley was hurt and after they started working with the Panda King. And that's all the continuity I can manage at this hour.

I was just going to do a one shot, but I've been up for nearly thirty six hours and I just don't have the energy. Enjoy a multi-chaptered angst fest instead. It even comes with an obligatory cliff hanger. Whee. I know this draft is far, far from perfect, but it's a rare pairing, so hopefully people will overlook my lack of knowledge and be nice enough to pretend like I know what I'm doing.

* * *

When Sly had nightmares, it was Bentley who comforted him.

Sly didn't particularly _want_ to comforted. He tried so hard to pretend like he was perfect, infallible, that sometimes he even fooled himself. He was a strong man, capable of smiling and joking through his own personal Hell, but his subconscious couldn't be fooled by his bravado. He woke up gasping for air, sweat streaking his ash gray fur, fists tangled up in the sheets. His amber brown eyes darted around the room briefly before he shut his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep. Bentley didn't know who he thought he was fooling with that.

If it was particularly bad, Sly would go outside for some fresh air. He'd come back laden with loot they didn't really need and money they didn't want. On a very rare occasion he'd brought Murray back some gifts. A statue of the Seattle Space Needle, a doughnut burger when they were in Missouri, a pumpkin for Halloween. They were very minor things, and he shrugged off any thanks. What they really were, Bentley knew, were distractions, conversation pieces that divert attention away from Sly's terrifying dreams. It kept Murray off of his case. Murray's attention span had never been anything like Bentley's.

Bentley couldn't be distracted with gifts. The first time that he heard Sly gasping for air late in the night, he shook him awake. They were six then, Sly barely a few inches taller than his best friend. Bentley managed to snap him out of it, but once he did, he found he had nothing to say. Sly was embarrassed. His dad never had nightmares. Coopers weren't supposed to be afraid of anything. They never talked about it. Bentley woke him a few more times and Sly told him not to, because people might see or hear and he didn't want that. That was the end of their conversation as far as Sly was concerned.

But Bentley was a hard man to deter, and he watched with worry as his friend flinched in his sleep yet again, gasping for air. These nights had become so rare with age it was possible to pretend Sly was an invincible as he said he was. Then Panda King joined up with them and Sly lost his ability to sleep. No matter what he said or pretended, he wasn't okay with working alongside the man who'd murdered his father. He tried to smile through it, only to be betrayed by his own mind when he lay down to rest. His ears twitched as he turned, clenching his teeth. Though he never did it when awake, when he was asleep Sly had a tendency to lapse back into Raqas, the language of racoons. If he had to attempt speaking with a native speaker he'd stumble through it from sheer disuse; as certain languages became more common native and traditional dialects faded from memory entirely. Bentley spoke no Tortoisei, and Murray only knew two words in Hippon. Sly's status in his people's dying language was uncertain, though significantly better than his friends'. Bentley knew the Coopers had been traditional and kept speaking it long after common languages began to spread across the globe. He also knew Sly had made zero effort to keep himself fluent.

Over the years Bentley had heard Sly say a lot of things he didn't understand. He wrote them down and tried to decipher it, but racoons weren't very open about their heritage to outsiders. He didn't know what Sly was saying and he likely never would - that topic was completely off limits. It always had been. Sly's voice strained with pain and obvious distress as Bentley fought with his desire to wake the poor man up. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and rolled over to where Sly lay, spouting gibberish and clearly in pain.

"Qasruqtuq, ikayuq, ikayuq, _papaq_!" Sly whimpered, thrashing. Bentley winced sympathetically, his theory about the source of Sly's nightmares confirmed instantly.

The only words he'd ever managed to translate, even with the aid of the internet, were papaq and agu. Father and mother. It wasn't hard to put the dots together, to see the look of pain and horror written across Sly's fingers as he fought it out with his own personal demons.

Bentley shook him by the shoulders, leaning forward in his chair to do so. Sly's hands clasped about Bentley's arms like he was fighting off an attack, until his eyes opened. His breathing was coming in short gasps and his ears were flat against his head as he stared up at his best friend blankly for a moment. His body was tense, his eyes wide even as Bentley leaned in closer. Sly's hands were going to leave bruises if they stayed so tightly clapsed, but it didn't matter. The turtle smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way.

"It's me, Sly. It's okay. You're awake now."

"Be... Bentley?" he murmured, body relaxing instantly. "I... I thought I told you not to wake me up unless we were alone."

"We _are_ alone, Sly. Nobody else sleeps through the middle of the day like you, remember?" Bentley said gently.

"Heh. Sorry. Nocturnal, you know?" Sky tried to smile, weakly. His grip on Bentley lessened so that it didn't hurt, but he didn't release him. "You can, just, you know, go be our techno wizard again. I'm gonna go take a walk."

Bentley grinned, briefly. "You'll need to let me go to do that, Sly."

Sly immediately released him, blushing through his fur. He coughed, awkwardly. The greatest thief that ever lived did not need to be _held_. "I need fresh air."

"No, what you need a therapist-"

"Bentley, we've talked about this."

"You telling me to mind my own business hardly constitutes a conversation, Sly." Bentley frowned. "If nothing else, you could at least hear me out for once in your life."

"I don't want to talk to some shrink about what happened. They're legally bound in most countries to turn me in to the cops, and then they'll blab to the papers." Sly stood up and rubbed at his eyes, tiredly. His posture betrayed his true tension. "It's not a big deal, so let it drop, Bentley. It's not affecting our performance as a team."

"This isn't about that!" Bentley half shouted, suddenly angry. Sly turned, surprised. Bentley almost never yelled; usually it indicated things were really going south. "You think I care how this affects our income? I'm worried about _you_, Sly, and how you're holding up. Money's replacable. You're not!"

There was a long pause before Sly sighed. "I... I can't. I can't talk about it. I just can't. Bentley, you don't understand. I... I don't want to think about it. It feels..." He paused, looking uncertain and strangely vulnerable.

"Sly. You can tell me. You know you can trust me," Bentley said solemnly, looking into his friends' eyes. "When have I ever lied to you?"

Sly sat down on his bed, tail wrapped around his legs. "It's like a knife in my chest that just keeps getting twisted deeper. And when I think about it I can't breathe. My thoughts just... blur together. I can't think. I can't stop thinking. It's like everything snaps in and out of focus. I can't take it. And it's getting worse and worse and I don't want to talk about it _because_ that makes it worse. I just want it to go away. It always did before," he added bitterly. "It wasn't like this before. It'll pass, right? ...right?"

"Sly, you're describing panic attacks to me and asking me to pretend that they'll just vanish. That's not how they work. You need to talk to someone, anyone, about this. Or it will only get worse now that Panda King's with us," the turtle explained, choosing his words carefully. "I know a guy. Top of his class in Psychology, both childhood and normal. Trustworthy with more unusual clients. He can make this go away. But you have to be willing to let him in."

The raccoon shut his eyes tightly. Bentley could see his mind forming protests, see the obvious disdain on his face. Sly never liked admitting he was weak or incapable of solving a problem. He never could swallow his pride. It was his only flaw, besides a terribly unhealthy tendency to pretend everything was fine when it clearly wasn't. He crossed his arms, looking down at the floor. His expression was unmistakbly defeated, even humiliated "I don't want a therapist. I don't want some stranger. I want to talk to you - and you have to promise not to tell anyone," he grumbled, eyes still downcast. "I can't take this anymore."

"A therapist would be far more qualified to-"

"But I _know_ you. I already _want_ to tell you, if I can talk about it without freaking out. I don't want anyone else. I want you."

Bentley knew what context Sly meant that in, but he still went red. Fortunately Sly's eyes were still trained on the floor, so he didn't see Bentley's jaw drop. _Now is _not_ the time_, he reminded himself. _Rule one, never mix therapy and romance. It will only hurt the patient._ "Sly... if you wanted to talk to me, why not just come to me?"

"Because it's stupid? Because I'm a big boy now? Because I should be over this already?" he volunteered, sounding increasingly angry, although all of it was turned inward. "Because I'm supposed to be the badass fearless leader?"

Bentley watched Sly sit down and pull his knees up to his chest with a strange feeling. He had the realization he'd dropped the ball, letting this go unaddressed for so long. He shouldn't have just ignored this pain Sly was trying to hide. He reached out and pulled himself onto the bed in a few swift motions, and wrapped his arms around a surprised Sly. For a moment the raccoon just looked at him like he'd gone mad, before gingerly hugging him back. Sly smelled like copper coins and smoke, earth and rain. It was the smell of home, Bentley realized as he pulled Sly closer.

"This is the point where you tell me stuff, according to my research," Bentley informed him. Sly snorted and choked back the start of potential tears.

"Okay. Where do I start? Sometimes I dream I'm in the closet and I can't get out to save them. My parents, I mean. And sometimes they're already dead and I'm trapped in there again, or I hear screaming and it's you. And I can't get to you in time..." His voice trailed off, eyes on Bentley's legs.

The turtle's eyes widened. "You blame yourself."

"Because if you never met me, your life would be pretty much perfect, yeah."

He looked into Sly's tired, tawny colored eyes. "That's not true."

"You'd have a real job, better friends, a good apartment and, you know, you could walk. Why would you ever want to even know me anymore?"

Bentley never looked away from Sly's eyes. "Because you're the most corageous, confident and stubborn person I've ever met, and I love you."

Sly started some sort of witty reply. Then his mind processed someone had just said they loveed him, and his face went blank. He looked like he thought he was hallucinating or just couldn't believe what he'd heard. The look on his face said the idea he was loved was totally foreign to him, as incomprehensible as snow was to a desert born scorpian. So Bentley gathered up every ounce of bravery he had in him, inhaled deeply, and braced himself for rejection.

Then he leaned upwards and kissed him.

_So much for rule one._


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **As I predicted, having gotten any amount of sleep, the resulting return to sanity has allowed me to see a number of failings in my original draft of this thing. The remainder of this will be spent fixing my own fic and covering my ass. The good news is, hey, Sly and Bentley get together! And maybe that'll distract people from the more obvious plot holes. Also there will be humor in the midst of the angst to keep it from being suffocatingly dark.

And special shout out to the world's worst flamer! Tell your friends, tell your fellow trolls, drum up publicity my mook! Get the outrage machine going so I get more views. :D

* * *

Sly's brain abruptly quit working.

And that was wonderful, because in his sleep he'd been unable to stop a _flood_ of thoughts - sounds from the past, words from his mind, voices, images flashing like blurs in front of him had left him feeling worse than he had in months. He hadn't even known where he was when he woke up. Then, like some kind of Godsend, there was Bentley, something real and tangible and comforting, stable in a lifetime of upheaval and constant change. He could breathe again once he saw Bentley was there. He could think straight.

Kissing him was like really waking up. Everything became clear, and calm, and right. He closed his eyes and leaned in, letting his awareness of everything else slip away. He didn't contemplate the future, or how this would affect the group dynamic, or how he could possibly have been oblivious to his friend's feelings. He didn't worry, or fear, or do anything but let his pulse slowly resume a normal tempo. He breathed in the scent of the pine cleaner Bentley used on his desk, the faintly earthly smell of turtle and felt the coolness of his smooth skin. And he _knew_, the way he knew the sun would rise and set, inherently, that everything would be okay.

His eyes opened when they managed to break apart. "It would be really awesome if I could be romantic and remember whatever 'I love you' was in my native tongue right now. But I don't have a clue."

"You usually don't."

"Thanks, Bentley." He smiled warmly at him. "So, not that I'm complaining, but when did you come to _this_ realization? Or have I just not noticed all along?"

"Actually, I've sort of been in denial for a while..." He sighed. "When you're a weakling turtle in a wheelchair who knows what the phrase 'divergent and intersecting universes' means, there's not a whole lot of people interested in you."

Sly frowned. "That's not true. You've had more girlfriends than I have... which isn't impressive given I've had two in my entire life, but still, that's better than I've been doing."

"Yes, and how many _boy_friends have I had?" Bentley looked away. "I know I'm not attractive. I have an alright brain, trapped in a dinky body. Even before the wheelchair, I was never someone who'd get a second glance. Nobody really ever saw me for anything other than a nerd to take advantage of. Except you." He turned his eyes back to Sly and smiled. "You've always been there for me."

Looking back, it had been a really unromantic way to meet. Sly had been having nightmares every night, and panic attacks during the day. Those first few weeks were Hell on Earth. Some older boy, a cruel mouse named Iono, had made things worse when he shoved Sly into a closet and locked him in. It was an hour before anyone thought to look for the newbie. When Bentley let him out he was coated in sweat and had clawed deep gouge marks in the door. He shook like a leaf and bolted outside for air, sucking it in like he was dying. And that was when they'd gotten to talking, hidden outside under the porch, Sly clutching that huge cane in his small hands. His eyes had been bright with tears he never let himself shed, and they'd stayed outside until it began to rain. It was the start of a friendship that would last a lifetime.

But that had also been the start of an endless uphill battle against Iono. He'd been a sadistic bully, a full six years older than them, and taken great relish in tormenting the youngest people there. The youngest were, in this order, Bentley, Sly and Murray. They'd been forced to band together or end up on the floor doubled up in pain. Sly had gotten his arm broken once defending Bentley, and Murray could still to this day be reduced to an incoherent rage when Iono's name was uttered. That was what had solidified Sly's complex about never allowing himself to be weak. He'd learned to use his cane against Iono, in defense of friends who weren't able to fight back. Bentley was a turtle, easily rendered defenseless by his inability to move as fast as his attacker. Murray was big and would be blamed for everything if he dared throw a punch. Sly was the defender. He was the fighter, the spirit that couldn't be broken. He was the one who kept them alive through three hellish years until Iono had abruptly vanished.

Sly had gotten into their friendship owing Bentley, but he stayed long after his debt was repaid. If anything, Bentley owed _him_ for being there. And now staying by Sly's side was as natural as breathing. He had to be here to help him through this, because if their positions were reversed, Sly would've been there for him in the same way. They would never leave or abandon each other. That was what their bond was. And whatever problems this relationship would have, whatever troubles they would face, they would never truly part from each other. Even if Sly broke their relationship off, Bentley would remain by his side forever, unfailingly.

"I don't deserve you," Sly noted aloud. "I'm... a liar, and a thief, and a dangerous person to stay with. I don't understand how you can be lumping praise on me when I'm the one who should be asking you if you're sure you don't want to hold out for someone more stable."

"Sly, not to reinforce outdated gender roles, but you're a stable provider. You've always taken care of Murray and I. You keep us together. We _need_ each other. So I don't mind an occassional personality flaw. We're a family. You can't scare me off with your imperfections."

"Insanity is 'an occassional personality flaw'?"

"You're not insane."

Sly snorted bitterly. "Yeah. I'm sure lots of sane people wake up shouting in a language they don't speak calling out for the dead."

"Actually," Bentley said gently, "It's a very normal psychological response to trauma. Your mind is attempting to process it, something that's being hindered by you refusing to talk about it for so long. If you'd allow yourself to really discuss this openly you might see some progress in getting this to stop."

"How soon can you make it stop?" he asked, looking slightly hopeful.

Bentley couldn't say for sure it would ever stop completely. Sly read the answer in his friend's face and his ears drooped immeadiately. "Well," Bentley replied quickly, trying to salvage the conversation, "We can start with what you remember."

Sly paused. Memories rose all too quickly up to the top, like a burst bottle of soda pop, the cloudy haze overflowing his ability to deal with it in mere seconds.

_Sly's father had burst through the door, yelling. The way he looked then would remain with Sly for the rest of his life; the sight of those brown eyes dialated, his ears flat and scared, the way his breath came in short exhausted bursts. Sly had almost been asleep when he'd heard the shouting._

_"Kista, uvaniituq! Aulabin pakmatuq!"_

_"Atii uqatkannigit?" Sly's mother had shouted, as the wind picked up dangerously outside.  
"Su tama?"_

_"Papaq?" Sly stumbled out of his room, looking around sleepily._

_Sly's father paled through his fur. Something was wrong. He was never scared. He had never looked so terrified in his entire life as he did then, before it was replaced by a mask of solemn confidence, one Sly would wear in his own adult life nearly constantly. Whatever he said to his wife then was lost to Sly over the sound of glass breaking, and then his father had him by the wrist and was shouting. And the door somewhere in the back burst open, and there was a crashing sound as the lights abruptly went out. The world became nothing but chaos, blurs of motions and colors too quick to be comprehended._

_And then he was in the closet, locked in forcibly, trapped and helpless to do anything or even understand what was happening. "Piqpavagin," Sly's father said once, clearly, and then his shadow was gone from the door and Sly sprung forward, trying to see what he could in the crack in the hard teak wood._

_Shadows and flickering lights played out before him. Screams, from somewhere, his mother's voice, and someone's smooth low voice mocking, sneering down as his father fought a hopeless battle against multiple figures. In the uneven and inconsistant light the attackers seemed to multiple, jump, move with impossible speed as they kept landing more and more blows on the slender raccoon in front of them._

_Screaming, so much screaming, static from the TV they'd knocked over, that low voice laughing, the lights were flashing and flickering and someone was calmly instructing them, his voice icy and controlled, as something hit the wall, some of the screams died and his heart was hammering so hard it hurt, his pulse beating in his head, make it stop make it stop make it-_

"Sly!" Bentley was shaking him. "Breathe!"

Green skin. Concerned eyes. The smell of nerd. Bentley. He was here. Sly blinked at him confusedly, slowly inhaling and exhaling, trying to make the world clear in front of him once more. He looked around, trying to reassure himself it wasn't real, none of it was. It was the past and the past couldn't hurt him. He was fine. He was okay. He - was shaking like a leaf, clutching his own tail in horror. He couldn't get that terrible feeling out of his body, like his chest was being clawed at and he realized he could feel his pulse running through his entire body. Bentley's grip on his shoulders tightened. Sly practically fell into his arms, burying himself in the only real thing he could find, the anchor back to sanity.

"I can't do this," he murmured into Bentley's ear. "I just can't even..."

"Sly..." He struggled to find words. "It's okay."

A good psychologist might've continued to press Sly for details, for words and memory fragments so they could begin to piece it all together. But Bentley wasn't a psychologist, he was Sly's friend. Boyfriend. Something like that. It didn't matter, they could work that out later. All that mattered was getting Sly through this, somehow. Professional psychology could kiss his shell for all he cared about procedure. Bentley wrapped his arms around Sly and tried to figure out what he could ever say to begin to stop what he'd unleashed. _Maybe, Mr. Psychologist,_ a voice in the back of his mind said, _you're not qualified to do this. Maybe you'll make it worse._

_Maybe_, he conceded to himself as Sly struggled to regain his ability to breathe. _But I have to try._

* * *

_He was four, a tiny little thing, and it was snowing._

_His father was around, as were some other adults, a myriad bundle of raccoons whose names Sly had long forgotten. They kept collective watch on the children, but mostly they were here to talk and commune and fry fish and tell stories. The words were all in their native tongue, all t's and q's and k's, music to Sly's ears as he chased after one playmate. His name was Nuka, and he was about six years old, with an oddly different tail, all white around the end with no rings. Nobody else wanted to play with Nuka. Sly could see his mother eyeing the two of them with disapproval. He was too young to understand then what he would later learn very well about his people. At the time, the reason no one liked him was incomprehensible. Now he knew._

_Nuka's mother was half fox. She stood as if banished, twelve feet and a world apart from the other women, hiding herself under a tree. The snow surely had to be bothering her, but she didn't so much as blink as the temperture dropped. She watched her son with something like an apology in her eyes as he bounded up to his cousins and they moved away, steadfastly ignoring him. Sly began trying to make a snowman and Nuka was distracted, but not oblivious to the scowls and glares he was recieving. Sly didn't understand yet. No one wanted them there. Snow coated the shoulders of the hybrid woman as she stood still as a statue, dignified and haughty. As much as she wasn't showing it, she knew they should never have come._

_And the next year, they didn't._

Sly blinked awake, briefly wondering what the weight on his chest was before Bentley let out a small snore. He vaguely remembered a long, long conversation and being held and at some point he must've calmed down enough to go to sleep. His arms were wrapped loosely around Bentley's back, the turtle's head nuzzled into his shoulder, and there was a blanket loosely draped over them - wait, he didn't remember that part. And it gray like the blankets in Murray's... room... oh, crap. _Well,_ he thought, _at least that's one less thing to explain, I guess. I just hope he's okay being the only one who's single yet _again_ in this group._

He tried his best to ignore the ancient memory his mind had dregged up. He'd made the decision long ago to walk away from the so called 'raccoon community' that preached a lot of high values but never lived up to them. For all their talk about extended family, no one had ever come to pick him up from the orphanage and raise him right. For all their values, they never had greeted him with anything but hostility and suspicion even when he was just a lonely teenager. He'd gone through a very badly planned period of wanting to know his roots, and his roots didn't want to know him back. So he'd more or less given up their ways; he made no effort to keep their language, he didn't go out of his way to date racccoons, and he had no idea what their customs were at this point.

If anything, his memory was proof that he was never really meant for raccoon society. Neither was his father, really; he remembered his father talking with Nuka's mother, inviting her inside for a few hours. It hadn't been enough to get her to stay or ever return, but it had been enough to remind the whole group how Coopers were, by nature, always in the wrong. Sly decided he kind of liked that about his father. The Coopers had never been particularly species-centric in their thinking. They were about stealing and the art thereof, not promoting old fashioned ideals that made no damn sense.

Bentley and Murray had taught him that family was a group of people that stuck together no matter what. Physical bodies were secondary to the bond they shared. He didn't need the shallow world of conformism and isolation that raccoons provided for each other, not when he had found people who would lay down their lives for each other regardless of their color. He found Murray outside, watching the sun set contemplatively. He didn't look particularly bothered by anything; just thoughtful. Sly moved to stand beside him silently.

"You guys took forever," Murray noted after a pause. "Geez, I hope my love life isn't going to be like that. No offense meant, buddy."

"Thanks. Your support is duly noted."

"Is that sarcasm or are you being sincere?"

Sly held up his hands, a hopeless gesture. "I don't even know anymore, man. So, you're... alright, with this... thing?"

"I'm a little confused, I admit. American tradition is to threaten to break the neck of my friend's boyfriend should he do anything wrong. Since I'm friends with both of you, I'm not sure who to threaten." He smiled warmly at Sly, satisfied with his simple understanding of the situation. "There's nothing wrong with love. Just be careful the papers don't get wind of it or they'll have a field day."

"Fortunately for Bentley, I'm the infamous person here, so it'd be my name in the mud." He shrugged. "There are worse things to be famous for. I just need to know you're okay with this since, you know, we _live_ together. It could get awkward."

"No, no, it's cool. I just wanted to wait until you were up so I could ask you for some dance moves."

"Great, I - wait, what?"

Murray grinned sheepishly. "See," he began, "There's this girl..."


End file.
